Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Danes and Swedes don’t obsess over meaning of life

For most of my sixty years I've seriously pondered the Big Question, "What is the meaning of life?" So much so, I've assumed that anyone who doesn't engage in similar pondering is shallow, clueless, frivolous, unaware.After all, Socrates said: "The unexamined life is not worth living." But there's intriguing evidence in Phil Zuckerman's "Society Without God" that most people in Denmark and Sweden simply live life, without questioning its meaning. And the citizens of these nations are among the happiest in the world, according to comparative surveys.So what gives? Zuckerman lived in Scandinavia for fourteen months, interviewing about 150 Danes…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“The Guru Papers” and magical thinking

Here's some additional correspondence that I've received from "Unknown," who sent along previously-posted (from January 12-28, 2009) material that can be found in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas category of this blog.

The theme of this submission is why people accept so uncritically a guru's claims of divinity, or special access to God, when either positive evidence is lacking or negative evidence is present.

I wasn't familiar with one of the cited books, "The Guru Papers." It looks interesting. I decided to order a used copy from Amazon — 408 pages of anti-cult prose for $6.99, that's the kind of cost-effective churchless reading I go for.

Click below to read on.

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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Get rid of the guilt, religious or otherwise

I usually don't see myself as a guilt-ridden person. However, yesterday I learned that old Catholic habits hang around in difficult-to-discern guises.I've got a natural food store checkout clerk to thank for this valuable churchless insight. This was my first visit carrying a Whole Foods reusable bag. My wife and I had picked several up during a trip to Portland earlier in the day (Salem doesn't have a Whole Foods Market -- or a Trader Joes, despite our fervent visualizations).When I plunked my purchases down on the conveyor belt and started to unfold the Whole Foods bag, I found myself…
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Posted inReality

Yes to science and mysticism, no to religion

I've pondered the nature of reality for about five decades. Specifics aren't becoming much clearer, but I feel like I'm making progress on three basic questions and general answers.(1) Is it possible to learn about the universe? Yes. (2) Is it possible to learn about the ultimate origin of the universe? No.(3) Is it possible to marvel at the mystery of the "Yes" and "No" above? Yes.The two affirmations in 1 and 3 lead me to embrace science and mysticism. The negative in 2 causes me to reject religion. Pretty damn simple. This makes so much sense to me, it's…
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Posted inWu Project

Resting in the stillpoint of mystery

So many religious beliefs.So many philosophical systems.So many gurus with divergent truths.So many notions of what life is all about.So many guides pointing in different directions.And so few people willing to say, "I don't know."Ignorance isn't bliss. But neither is illusory knowledge. I'm much attracted to those who have done their best to sort through the world's collection of answers to life's biggest questions and have the guts to say it like it is:All come up short.Virtually everyone ends up choosing sides in the massive Game of Meaning, where countless teams vie to collect the greatest number of people willing…
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Posted inGod

God demands heresy. I obey, devoutly.

Fairly frequently I hear from true believers who ask me, in so many words, "Brian, how could you?" Almost always my reply is "There's no way I couldn't."Meaning, my nearly lifelong search for the way things really are necessitates leaving aside the way things aren't. The fancy philosophical term for this is Via Negativa, the negative way.In negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable, an abstract experience that can only be recognized—that is, human beings cannot describe the essence of God, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be ultimately false and conceptualization should be avoided.Religions love…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

“Spirituality” is a meaningless word

After trying to lead a spiritual life for most of my 60 years, I feel eminently qualified to make what may seem to be a radical suggestion: Let's do away with spirituality.Not so much the actions people associate with being spiritual, but how the word is usually used -- and the divisiveness that comes with splitting reality into "spritual" and "material" spheres.Actually, the problem with spirituality isn't that the word is meaningless. Rather, it has so many meanings, most of them aren't recognized by someone using the term in a particular sense.Check them out."Spirit" and "soul" are closely connected. So…
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Posted inBuddhism

The Monk and the Philosopher debate Buddhism

It's interesting how my attitude toward Buddhism has changed during the course of my descent (or ascent) into churchlessness. I used to find Buddhism wonderfully non-dogmatic. Now, I see it as permeated with an uncomfortable amount of religiosity.A couple of fellow Tai Chi students recommended "The Monk and the Philosopher" to me. With the subtitle, a father and son discuss the meaning of life, how could I resist making a visit to Amazon?Last month I wrote about how when the Monk (Matthieu Ricard) and his Philosopher father (Jean-Francois Revel) discuss karma, I disagreed with the Buddhist notion that Tibetans brought…
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Posted inUniverse

The universe is unity

Look around. Outside of yourself. Inside of yourself. Do you find any sharp divisions between utterly distinct aspects of reality? I can confidently predict, "No, you don't." (If I'm wrong, enlighten me.) There's a reason the word universe starts with "uni." It's a whole.Most religions, maybe all, are founded on a duality of some sort. Heaven and earth. Soul and body. Spirit and matter. God and creation. Salvation and sin. Liberation and karma. Truth and maya. Yet these supposedly separate spheres of existence aren't evident. They're concepts, belief structures that have to be taken on faith. So religious believers necessarily…
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Posted inScience

Embrace evolution. Because it’s real.

I'm a day late on celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday with a blog post. But yesterday I listened to disbelievers in the theory of evolution hold forth on the radio, so I was thinking of you, Charles.What Darwin did, brilliantly, is point us in a vitally important direction: reality. That's what science does so well, and religion so poorly.Now, I realize that "reality" is a dirty word to many people, not all of whom are fundamentalists, because it sounds so elitist, unspiritual, objectifying, divisive. One guy I heard on a talk show claimed that he wasn't religious; he just wanted students…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Back to old comment system

Blog visitors, me included, were encountering too many problems with the TypePad Connect commenting feature, so I've gone back to the old system. It looks like comments made during the past week have been preserved. I've copied them in case any are missing.
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Hanging out with a guru leads to disillusion

Most disciples of a guru believe that if they could have more intimate face-time with him, their faith would be strengthened. Plus, their spiritual progress would soar.

But belief isn't reality.

Here's the story of Phil, a Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) initiate who got to hang out with Gurinder Singh, current RSSB guru, when Phil lived in the Caribbean.

Phil said it'd be fine to share his thoughts via a blog post. I've mildly edited a couple of his email messages, fixing some typos and adding a few explanations in bracketed italics.

It's interesting reading, providing a rare behind-the-scenes perspective on time spent with a guru who is considered by the faithful to be GIHF, God in Human Form.

You can either download the PDF file, or click on the continuation to this post.
Download Phil message 2

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Posted inMiscellaneous

Comment on comments

Some blog visitors haven't been able to view recent comments. I've let TypePad support know about the problem. Hopefully it will be temporary. The new commenting feature, TypePad Connect, is in "beta" mode, so it isn't glitch free. This blog, like others that have adopted it, are helping to make TypePad Connect better by pointing out problems.On this front, I've turned off the photo/image that can appear with a comment. I don't like how the space for a comment is reduced by the width of the photo/image.
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Posted inScience

Brain hard-wires a belief in God

Most religious believers consider that they're on the road to transcending the crudity and illusion of material reality. So, churchless skeptic that I am, it was hugely enjoyable to read in the latest issue of New Scientist about increasing evidence that the brain creates God.More accurately, a belief in God.An alternative being put forward by Atran and others is that religion emerges as a natural by-product of the way the human mind works. That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Open thread (free speech!)

Since one of my favorite godless blogs is trying out this "open thread" thing, I figured it was time for me to take the plunge. It's just an opportunity to say whatever you want via a comment. Or comment on a comment. And so on. Basically an open thread is putting up a soapbox on a blog, so people can talk about any subject that comes to mind. (P.Z. Myers has his untouchable subjects; I don't ... so far.)
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

The universe is constant change

How to deal with change? As David vanWyngaarden says below, this is a big philosophical and existential question. Heck, maybe the only question.Because if change didn't exist, neither would life. So we wouldn't be around to wonder about life. Or change. David emailed his thoughts to me and said it'd be fine to share them if I wanted. Which, I do. When I read David's mention of "flow" in competitive karate, I wrote back and told him that I'd had similar intuitions during my nine years of Shotokan training -- which continued with my migration to mixed style martial arts,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

End of spiritual questions is the final answer

Having finished U.G. Krishnamurit's "Mind is a Myth," I haven't changed my initial impression of this anti-guru. As I said in my first post about U.G., he's intriguing, irritating, and inspirational.U.G. urges people to make up their own minds. He sees humanity as being bound by conditioning and an excessive preoccupation with thoughts. We trust what others have said in the past even if it conflicts with our own immediate knowing.I like his emphasis on uniqueness.I submit that nature is attempting to create a unique individual every time something is created. ... By using the model of Jesus, Buddha, or…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Blog has new commenting feature

Ooh, change! Sort of scary. Especially when I just made the change to this here Church of the Churchless blog. Even though it isn't holy (except to me), any fiddling around with blog features, particuarly beta ones still in testing, is a bit anxiety-producing.So far, the new commenting feature seems to be working fine. That's based on one comment I just left to the previous Krishnamurti post.Let me know, via the email link to the left, if you encounter problems. I'm as new to this as you are, just about, but will do my best to answer questions.For the moment…
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Posted inMystics

U.G. Krishnamurti — intriguing, irritating, inspirational

I don't know what to make of U.G. Krishnamurti. That would have pleased him, I'm sure. (He died in 2007.)U.G. liked to say, "I have no teaching...I have no claims." Yet he was one of those un-teachers who somehow managed to do a lot of what sure looked like spiritual guiding.Personally, I find such behavior exasperating. I want to scream, "Dude, if you've got nothing to say, if you don't want to be looked upon as a guru, don't talk to people, don't let them make recordings and videos of you, don't allow books to be made out of your…
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